About the Shamans’ Videohistory Project
By documenting their life stories, the Shamans’ Videohistory Project will create a living library to ensure that their wisdom is passed on, so that their communities will survive, and with them their forests.
The Project has been in existence since December 2003 when it first presented the videohistory proposal to the annual gathering of the shamans of the UMIYAC - the Union of Traditional Indigenous Doctors of the Colombian Amazon. The Inga, Kamtzá, and Siona Taitas; the Cofán Curacas; and the Tatuyo Payés, gave permission to begin exploring the possibility of videotaping the life stories. By now, formal agreements have been reached with Cofán Curacas, and a Siona and Inga Taita to tape their life stories.
The Project counts with the Amazon Conservation Team as its fiscal sponsor. The Amazon Conservation Team works with traditional healers and their communities in Colombia, Brazil, and Suriname to protect traditional indigenous medicine, indigenous culture, and the rainforest. All three are indivisibly intertwined, as the healers stress time and again.
The Shamans’ Videohistory Project, by taping the life stories and creating a living library of life wisdom, hopes to contribute to the well-being of all of the dimensions of the healers and their communities.
Using a newly-purchased Sony HVR-Z1N High Definition camcorder operated by a Colombian cameraman with more than 20 years’ experience, the idea is to capture the highest quality affordable of video and sound.
So far, the Project has been cementing all of the bases: firming up communications, including by installing a new cellular antennae; gearing up to construct a new ceremonial house which will also double as meeting space, taping platform, as well as lodging area; developing all of the legal agreements necessary to ensure that the resulting archive truly belongs to the elders; as well as resolving a myriad logistical questions.
Once the Project begins taping stories, a process that will take several years, the elders and their communities will also define the various uses for the material, including ways that the video can be used by the indigenous school teachers. Two such teachers are active members of the Project.
The language in the video will be in the native languages, all of whom are threatened with extinction, and the interviews will be conducted by the apprentices and/or offspring of the elders. The shamans will be interviewed along with their wives, as their lives are completely intertwined.